Socialist Terror Reign and a 275 Mile Walk to Freedom

A Socialist Terror Reign. A Polish youth was forced to deal with Russian Socialists and Nazi Socialists. May 1945, when Gunther Skaletz was only 16 years old, he escaped a Russian boxcar one night, evading gunfire. He then walked away to East Germany to more terrors. He was a Pole. His journey on foot was for 275 miles.

And that’s only part of this young Pole’s harrowing story.

When Gunther was only 12 years old, the Nazis invaded Poland, including his hometown of Tarnowskie Gory in southern Poland. He had already lived a harsh life of poverty since a child. His mother died 18 months after he was born, then his older sister died, too. When his father rode a bicycle to work in a coal mine, Gunther’s six-year-old sister took care of him and his other siblings.

Fortunately, Gunther’s father married again to a wonderful woman. His loving stepmother had deep faith and taught it to her children, including Gunther. They were a close knit family.

When 1939 rolled around, Gunther was twelve, and the Nazis, then the Russians invaded. The National Socialists (or Nazis) closed the Polish schools and burned the Polish textbooks and other books. He remembers his Polish friends being murdered in broad daylight by the Nazis or carried off at night. For this, he remained sad.

By the time he was fifteen, Gunther’s father got him a job in a hotel in Osweiecim, a Polish industrial town. The Germans renamed it Auschwitz. Only one month of working there, Gestapo officers stormed in. Otto Kleinert, the hotel owner and Gunther’s guardian refused to join the Nazi party. To teach him a lesson, the Gestapo took his entire staff into the basement for interrogation and torture. Gunther, his faith strong, at one point yelled, “Please, Jesus, help me,” for which he was beaten. The Gestapa sent the whole staff, including Gunther, into Auschwitz concentration camp. They were not Jews. There, they were forced to build roads. Gunther kept up his strong faith.

After six months, Gunther and the hotel staff were released. The hotel owner signed over all his property to the Nazis in exchange for his staff being released. Gunther admitted, “Kleinert lost everything for our freedom.”

Kleinert took Gunther with him to Berlin where, though he did not own it, he managed a hotel. Berlin came under heavy Allied bombing. Losing the war, Gunther, at only sixteen, was forcibly conscripted into the German army. ( Something the Nazis and Russians did everywhere they invaded.) Gunther was sent to the Russian front and forced to fight.

When Russian Communists prevailed against the Germans, they took over Poland and exacted more crimes against the Polish than the Nazis. Gunther returned to Berlin, working a month in a hotel. KGB officers rolled up in a truck, accused him and others he belonged to a counterrevolutionary army. Once more, he was loaded into a truck as a prisoner, this time to go to Siberia. Later, riding in a boxcar, one of many prisoners, he planned his escape.

One night, the train stopped. German soldiers entered the car for some reason. Right then, an explosion occurred somewhere and the Germans stepped out of the car. That is when Gunther and another man made their escape.

Gunther made his 275 mile walk to Berlin where he had last lived. It did not take him long to realize how bad things were there under Communist Socialist dictatorship. He said, “I lived in constant fear.” He was able to take a train west to just outside the border of East and West Germany. Under cover of night, he crept across a field to escape. He remembered the words of Scripture: In his mind, a man plans his course, but the Lord directs his steps. (Prov 16:9)

He trained as a chef in Switzerland, then was offered a job in New York. He actually had the job of cooking for Lyndon B. Johnson on his ranch in Texas. He now lives, at 95, in Ozark, Missouri and continues work in his church.